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The journey to a full night's sleep

Month: July 2016

It’s been a long time since my last post, but 2 years after I now believe I have managed to overcome my insomnia.

During the past 2 years there is not a single treatment I have not tried – behavioural therapy, over-the-counter bullshit, yoga, sleeping pills, herbal sleep aids and anything I could get my hands on. It’s been a roller coaster of success and failure which sometimes made me feel as if I was participating in a clinical trial, only that during most of the experiment I was given placebo.

Going back and forth with all kinds of sleeping pills, each with its own benefits and drawbacks has made me sort of an expert in the field. Did you know most of these pills are addictive? That if you take them for long enough then you would need a withdrawal plan?? I didn’t, and it made things a whole lot more complicated once they stopped working.

Say hello to my little friend

Melatonin – I did not have much faith in that hormone. First because I tend to be scared of anything that is a hormone, mainly because I’ve seen my wife when her hormones go nuts. That’s really scary. Realistically, it seems harmless and with very few risks. I’ve heard of people who use it for jetlags, and having used it for a while it did help me fall asleep, which was great, but I also had the same effect from some of the other pills I had taken before.

Funny thing is that this so-called sleep hormone causes our brains to start preparing the body systems for sleep, which apparently is a process that occurs naturally if everything is working perfectly. When you have melatonin shortage, then everything gets messed up.

Not everything is perfect

Sounds wonderful, right? No.
You see the drawback of using melatonin is that it helps you fall asleep quite impressively, but then you’re still stuck with waking up in the middle of the night. So what do you do? take some more. And it does work, but do you really want to wake up in the middle of the night, take another pills and wait for it to start working?

My mornings were still a struggle, as I was still tired and felt like I didn’t get a full night sleep (which was true). Someone suggested I would start taking a pill called Circadin which is a form of melatonin that is released slowly throughout the entire night. Makes sense, right?

I got my prescription from the doc, paid a high price for this box of Circadin and hoped for the best.
So yes, I kept falling asleep, but I was still waking up in the middle of the night.

The thing they forget to tell you

I felt cheated.
Having to pay a premium price for a drug that gave the same results as “regular” melatonin and also required me to go to the doctor’s office was not what I expected.

Luckily, I looked up this pill online and came across some guy who twitted that patience is the key factor for Circadin. Apparently it takes a few days, or even weeks to feel its effect because it readjusts your biological clock.

It took me 2.5 weeks to start sleeping almost like before!
It’s been 5 months already, I’m still using it and it works. Even when I forget to take it once in a while I still get a decent sleep, something that NEVER happened with the other sleeping pills.

Recently I learned that some doctors use Circadin as a way to help insomniacs withdraw from their addictions to other sleeping pills. I didn’t full understand how this works, but I wish I had known that when I was on the hook!

Bottom line: I got my life back. I can sleep, I feel alert during the day and most importantly – I don’t think I’ll ever have to write another post on this blog!